R+D

Like any serious cocktail bar these days, the entrance to R+D is “secret.” To get in, you have to go around to the back of Citizen Public House in Scottsdale, AZ, traipse up a fire escape to the roof, find a menu box with the house rules (“Women can approach men but men cannot approach women”) and a phone number, dial the number, and wait however many minutes the host tells you to wait for one of the first-come, first-served 32 seats.

This approach to craft cocktail bars has, of course, been de rigueur since 2000, when Sasha Petraske began painstakingly concocting drinks at Milk & Honey in New York, where the phone number changed regularly to remain secret and guests had to abide by rules such as “No fighting, play fighting, no talking about fighting.” (Post-M&H copycats include Library Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, Green Russell in Denver, and the Aviary in Chicago.) R+D, however, is not just aping these craft-cocktail conventions but scientifically pushing their drinks to new levels.

(Credit: UseSalt.com)

Beyond the leather sofas and liquor-themed wallpapers you find the actual bar, which looks like a laboratory: siphon double-boilers, a full array of powdered and liquid chemicals, jars of exotic house-made bitters (like South American maca root) on the shelves. Out of this lab come experimental drinks such as the G+T, where the gin is actually manufactured right at your table. Using a hot plate and a siphon-style double-boiler–with Absolut vodka in the lower boiler and botanicals (primarily juniper berries) and citrus in the upper–the vodka is heated enough to infuse it with the juniper and citrus, but no actual alcohol is lost during the 10-minute process. Why go to so much trouble? For fresh aromatics: They’re so powerful you get with the the scent of the flavors before the G+T even touches your lips.

The cocktail (served with Fever-Tree tonic water) costs $17–perhaps a lot for a single Gin and Tonic, especially in a place like Scottsdale, but this pours enough for two.

The crafty businessmen behind R+D are locals
Bernie Kantak,
Andrew Fritz, and mixologist
Richie Moe–who, said Fritz, “is the mad scientist that came up with most of our cocktails. I think he has flashbacks from high school chemistry class and figured out how to apply that to beverages.”

Those beverages include the Fear and Loathing Mezcal Margarita, which comes equipped with a syringe and three “lines” of salt, and a whole range of “shipwrecked” cocktails that mimic how barrels of cognac traveled overseas in the 19th century. Back then, when all the barrels couldn’t fit below deck, sailors would put them on the ship’s top deck, where exposure to the elements (sun, salt, water, and the cold night) would give the liquor a very different and complex flavor.

“Wooden barrels are basically a living, breathing thing, so when it heats up, it contracts,” said Fritz. “Wood takes in the marine air and sucks in the salt.”

R+D’s tribute involves putting batch-made cocktails–a Negroni or a Sazerac–in five-liter, medium-char, new American oak barrels, then rubbing the barrels in sea salt. The barrels are then set outside on R+D’s roof during the day in the hot Arizona sun, and at night stored in the refrigerator. In between, they agitate the barrels to emulate the rocking of a ship.

“This process simply mellows out the cocktails. They have time to age, the flavors are heightened, and it adds smokiness and depth,” said Fritz.

Cold-dripped margarita (Credit: UseSalt.com)

The bar’s claim to fame, however, is a cold-dripped margarita made with Patron Burdeos and Grand Marnier 150th Anniversary. Using a three-tiered system traditionally used to make coffee, they mix the tequila and Grand Marnier in the top chamber and it slowly drips down via spiral tube into the second chamber, which houses lime zest and pulp, and then, via another spiral tube that filters the liquid, into the bottom chamber. The intensely flavored margarita that results takes a whopping three hours to produce, which is why it requires a reservation, so that the staff can get it started before you arrive. In fact, it’s the only way to get a reservation at R+D.

The price tag for a drink that serves 5 to 10 people and includes menus for ice (blocked, cubed, chipped), limes (kaffir, finger, key), and salt (pink Himalayan, red volcanic, black): $1,000.

“This really encompasses what we do at R+D,” said Fritz. “It borders on molecular mixology without going so far over the edge that we lose the focus of creating a good cocktail.” –Jimmy Im

Jimmy Im is a travel writer, a TV host, and the Los Angeles editor for BlackBook magazine.